New Blog + No Shampoo Results

Well, here is another attempt of me trying to keep a blog. My last one got hacked due to a security hole in WordPress – though that could have been my fault as well since my old blog was so out of date with WordPress updates. So I purged the old WordPress files (keeping the database – why lose my old entries?) from the server and installed the most recent version manually. I wanted to use Fantastico to install it as it makes doing updates and stuff easy, but it kept thinking the old version was still installed and wouldn’t work. I guess the manual install is better anyways so I can keep an eye on things myself.

Plus I don’t trust Fantastico after I saw it was passing all the information I filled out (username AND password) through the URL! How unsecure! For those that don’t know, information such as passwords SHOULD NEVER be passed through the url – for login or account creation (you can check by looking at the url, do you see something like “&password=[your password here]?). It’s just bad practice. Plus they didn’t hide my password as I was typing it so of course my browser saved it as a form field I filled in… that reminds me, I need to clear the history in my browser now.

I suppose I could have wrote my own blogging tool but man, thinking of the upkeep sounds like a pain.

So I figure this time instead of trying to blog about my daily life (let’s face it – my life ain’t that interesting enough to warrant a blog dedicated to it), I’ll try to blog about something specific. In this case I decide to keep a blog to track various craft and DIY projects. I’m hoping that having this blog will encourage me to do more craft projects at home (instead of just bookmarking stuff for “later”) and that by crafting I’ll be able to keep a blog going for once. Afterall, I got all these domain names registered, I might as well use them for something right?

So one of the things I’ve been trying so far is this whole no shampoo thing. I’ve been at it for maybe a week now (or a week an a half, I don’t remember) and I can’t say I’m loving it. I’ve been doing the baking soda scrub (for washing) with apple cider vinegar rinse (for conditioning) and I can’t really say it’s as great as real shampoo. Though I have read on various blogs and sites that the first week or so can be rather “slick” (aka greasy, omgwtfhorrible) as your scalp adjusts to producing less oil since you’re no longer stripping all of it away everyday with shampoo.

So maybe I just need to tough it out a bit longer? I have to admit that today I was very tempted by the shampoo bottle in my tub. I just kept thinking how great it’d be to lather and condition until my hair is squeaky clean and silky smooth. I held back though. Why let my efforts go to waste? But it is especially disgusting to blowdry hair that is not grease free. I do have to admit that my head does NOT feel dirty though. Usually if I go too long without washing my hair (which I never do of course…) my head starts to get itchy and that doesn’t happen when I was with the baking soda. So I guess it’s clean in a greasy way? I don’t know. I am getting quite tired of wearing hats to work though. I could tie my hair up but I still worry! Hats just cover it all

So a few days ago I remembered that I read about someone using lemon juice to help with the greasiness. At some point during this week I had gotten a bit desperate for clean feeling hair so I tried it. Squeezed half a lemon into tupperware and worked it into the top of my head after the baking soda wash. It worked great! My hair did not feel greasy at all. Well the back part felt a bit (it’s where oil tends to build up the most so maybe I didn’t use enough juice back there) but other than that my hair felt pretty clean.

At the start of this experiment I also tried a lemon + cucumber mix to wash my hair in. I used a whole lemon and half a cucumber and blended it together and took this to the shower with me. Man that must have been the most horrible idea ever. It was not the easiest to get in or out of my hair and I think I spent another 20 minutes or so after rinsing down the sides of my tub to get the pulp out. I have a hair strainer so I had to keep emptying the pulp out of that as well so it wouldn’t block the drain.

Well today I was getting ready for my shower, making my baking soda and apple cider vinegar mix and decided to give the cucumber and lemon thing a try again. I knew lemon worked with the grease and thought maybe the cucumber would help condition. So I blended half a lemon and half a cucumber and added the leftovers from the previous mix I made. Only this time I strained that shit first! A coffee filter probably would have been great for this but unfortunately I’m not a huge coffee drinker and I use a coffee press anyways so I don’t have any filters. What I did instead was use a paper tower and ripped it into 4 sections and strained a bit at a time through them. I had to squeeze on the pulp to get all the juices out so I did “pop” a few of the tissues (luckily none of the pulp fell in the mixture). What I was left with was juice only – no pulp to clean out of the tub! I poured it into one of those glass jars that Japanese rice seasoning tends to comes in:

I think the cucumber diluted the effects of the lemon though as my hair feels like nastiness right now. I am hoping that the greasiness will fade soon because if this is how the whole no shampoo thing feels forever then I don’t think I can do it. I really do love the feel of my hair when its all clean and smooth. What to do tomorrow though… make a quick trip to the grocery store for lemons? Try combing some flour into my scalp to soak some of it up?

Whew that was a long first post. Wonder if anyone other than me is ever going to read it haha. And nice! It’s awesome that WordPress lets you upload and insert images right from their dashboard now. I’m not sure if that was always there. I do remember having to upload the images myself to the server before inserting it when using older versions of WordPress.